By Molly McMahon, Director, The Teachers Guild

This article was first published by BRIGHT Magazine on April 5, 2019. You can read the original piece here.

“It’s amazing I get to teach during this tumultuous time,” says Karen Heil, a middle school teacher in the Bronx borough of New York City. “As teachers, we influence young minds that will go out into the world. It’s an opportunity to impart wisdom and hope, so that they can make a difference in the world.” Though overwhelmed by current social and political events dividing the United States, Heil is focused on being a role model for her students.

“To be a great teacher, you have to start with empathy and listen,” she says. For example, she noticed her middle school students zoning out in science class. “This is where the design process begins. How do you know how to fix a problem without understanding what the problem is?”

To help better understand why her students were not learning well, Karen went to her students and asked them about their days. Many shared that school felt boring, stuck in the daily rut: class, homework, repeat. Armed with this insight and a mission to bring more joy to the classroom, Karen prototyped a new “project-based learning” approach that combined the arts with science. “I wanted students to be excited while learning about rocks and minerals,” she says.

Heil is a member of The Teachers Guild, a nonprofit initiative that uses design thinking principles to strengthen school communities. The Guild has over 10,000 teacher members across all 50 states. Design thinking, which in this case involves asking questions, understanding the needs of students, and collaborating with them, helps teachers begin to address and solve some of the biggest problems facing students and their communities.

To be a great teacher, you have to start with empathy and listen. How do you know how to fix a problem without understanding what the problem is?

Most importantly, design thinking builds “Collective Teacher Efficacy” (CTE), the belief within teachers that they have the power to enact change. If educators believe they can make a positive difference, then they likely will. Research shows that CTE is the number one factor driving positive student outcomes.

For Heil, the act of making learning joyful for her students, and instilling confidence in them, was a crucial first step. One way to do this, she decided, was to get her students to create illustrated comics featuring a particular mineral as a hero, and endowed each one with a superpower based on the rock’s unique properties. Characters like Zinc Possible and Miss Magnet appeared throughout the comic book collection, which the class titled, “Adventures in Mineral City.” In one part of the story, Diamond Doom busts his friends out of jail by smashing through the cell bars, which is possible because he’s made of such hard, durable material.

The middle schoolers also dressed up as their chosen mineral and created trading cards featuring the rock and its properties. One girl wore a sparkly green boa to represent emerald. “The kids loved autographing their trading cards and sharing them with each other,” says Heil. Younger grades even visited Heil’s class to learn from her students, who explained the minerals through their comics, costumes, and cards.

“They not only learned about geology, but they learned about themselves,” says Karen. “I saw them develop confidence and put themselves out there.”

For other teachers, design thinking helped them prototype solutions to address social issues such as marginalization experienced by many students of color. At a high school in Round Rock, Texas, students of color experience disproportionate disciplinary action: 24 percent of the student population is African-American and Latinx, yet they represent 50 percent of disciplined students.

Digging deeper into this troubling statistic, Tiffanie Harrison, a marketing teacher and Teachers Guild member, noticed these students were getting into trouble for things like skipping class and disrespecting teachers, indicating a lack of connection to the classroom. Harrison designed a school-wide equity audit along with a group of students to address this issue. “My role was to [include] students in the design process by first helping them ask questions and use empathy to understand [their] stories,” she says.

The group discovered that the marginalized students were rarely asked about their experiences by administrators, teachers, and fellow students. As a result, they felt invisible and disconnected from the community. “It’s hard to convince someone who doesn’t experience the problem that it’s a problem,”says Harrison. She supported the students in designing experiments to elevate the unheard voices among the student body and foster opportunities for understanding and connection.

For example, during Black History Month, students created posters of modern African American heroes for teachers to hang in their classrooms. They organized panels and discussion groups for the larger school community to share stories and listen to different perspectives. Students even attended school board meetings to share their personal experiences with disproportionate discipline. “I was surprised by how prepared the students were in each instance,” says Harrison. “They were waiting for this moment, but had never had it.”

Every day in front of this class, I’m creating a citizen.

This series of experiments resulted in the creation of the school’s first black student union, a student-run organization devoted to discussing and advancing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Harrison and the students created spaces where people can be heard and seen. “When you build understanding and relationships, you can do more,” she says. Educators, administrators, and parents now demonstrate greater empathy for the student experience, and the model has spread to four other schools in the area.

Harrison admits that she’s still uncomfortable thinking of herself as a civic leader, though she steps into this role every day as a teacher. After all, a nation’s future is built in schools and classrooms with teachers as civic leaders. Harrison believes that equipping teachers with design-thinking is a way to give them the permission and agency to lead. “Design is the most effective way to empower teachers and students to address the goals for society,” she says. “It’s my job to teach my students to be responsible citizens. It’s a high and necessary calling.”

Schools are one of the first places children gather in community. Teachers are often the first voice of reason students encounter to help them navigate issues like discrimination, climate change, and violence. For Keishia Blake, another educator in the Bronx, her job goes beyond just teaching children math and English. She says, “Every day in front of this class, I’m creating a citizen.”

What Happens When Teachers Become Design Thinkers? was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is an excerpt of an article written by Julian Peeples. It appeared in California Educator Magazine’s 2018 Innovation issue. Read the original piece here.

Imagine a new planet similar to Earth has been discovered and you are asked to help build the first city there. What would you name the city? How would you ensure it meets the needs of people who live there? Where would you even start?

These were just a few of the questions that educator Tess Dickerson asked her kindergarten class in 2017 for a project using an innovative approach called “design thinking.” Assisted by a buddy class of fifth-graders, these kindergartners identified needs and developed idea before building prototypes of these ideas, like a slide for city residents to ride from their hotel to a nearby restaurant. After testing and refining their ideas, the students built their city out of recyclables.

“We spent the whole morning building,” says Dickerson, a teacher with Vista Unified School District and member of the Vista Teachers Association. “I don’t know how many times I heard the kids say, ‘This is the best day ever!’”

Design thinking is an approach to creative problem-solving that focuses on professional design methods, like empathizing and experimentation, to develop innovative solutions to questions or problems. Birthed in the 1950s, it initially guided the creation of new products that solved consumer problems or fulfilled certain needs, before starting to appear in education a couple of decades later and more frequently in the 2000s.

In design thinking, students follow a six-step process that encourages the same kind of thinking process an inventor or engineer would use. But instead of inventing a better light bulb or designing a freeway interchange, students explore issues that are relevant to their lives. This year, Dickerson’s kindergartners are pondering “How do you stay safe at school?”

“What does safe mean? It gets kids thinking about their part in the community. They become aware of their place in this world and how other people think about things,” Dickerson says. “When we give them this kind of foundation, it validates them as learners and individuals. Everybody can be a part of the process, have an idea or draw a picture.”

The design thinking program at Vista is a partnership between global design firm IDEO and The Teachers Guild, a professional community created to activate teachers’ creativity to solve major challenges in education. IDEO provides the design for learning techniques and foundation, while The Teachers Guild provides resources and support for implementation. Vista is one of three Teachers Guild chapters in California (along with Oakland and Fremont) and seven nationally.

Teachers Guild director Molly McMahon says that al l teachers are inherently designers, and design thinking serves the near-constant need for educators to creatively problem-solve from the lens of their students and communities.

“In the design thinking process, there is a strong focus on empathy in the work we do,” she says. “We tell teachers: ‘If you’re going to create change, you start with yourself, your own biases; start with questions and not answers; and believe that you can create change.’ So we create opportunities to understand yourself and others. Equity and innovation go side by side.”

Continue reading the full piece here.

Design Thinking: Students, Educators Become Fearless Problem-Solvers was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This essay was first published by Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is part of a series written by leading education practitioners in response to a Carnegie Corporation of New York report on improving education equity by addressing fragmentation.

It’s mid-May at Baychester Academy, a public elementary school in the Bronx’s District 11. Like all schools across New York City, the school day draws to a close with a ritual exchange: teachers usher students out of classrooms to meet their parents, patiently waiting by the school’s main office.

But then something unusual happens: Educators from across the district begin to arrive.

Fifteen of them snake through groups of students who are streaming out the doors. Another ten arrive soon after, having battled 45 minutes of traffic. And by 4:00 p.m., nearly 40 teachers and administrators from four elementary schools in District 11 are packed into Baychester’s cafeteria. Jenna Petrella, a kindergarten teacher at District 11’s P.S. 41, stands up, grabs a microphone, and passionately declares, “We all believe that change is not just necessary, but that it’s possible. And it starts with us.” The cafeteria surges to life with applause and shouts of affirmation.

Jenna Petrella, a kindergarten teacher at District 11’s P.S. 41, stands up, grabs a microphone, and passionately declares, “We all believe that change is not just necessary, but that it’s possible. And it starts with us.”

Since when did professional development become such a hot ticket?

The Bronx’s District 11 is one of seven Chapter sites of The Teachers Guild, a nationwide professional learning community that supports teachers’ growth as creative leaders. With a philanthropic grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Teachers Guild’s Chapters program guides educators through a yearlong design process to create learner-centered solutions for their classrooms and schools.

Through this work, District 11 educators are focused on designing solutions that infuse joy and curiosity into their classrooms. In one example, a group of teachers and students from P.S. 175 built a GreenThumb Garden, where students could produce food, help beautify their school, and learn key academic concepts. At P.S. 41, another team designed Fun Fridays, which embedded more creative, hands-on activities into the schedule to boost student experimentation and love for learning.

Such creative efforts are in stark contrast to the typical “sit-and-get” professional development sessions that many teachers experience. In a place like District 11 — where more than 90 percent of students are nonwhite and more than three-quarters are from low-income families — it also affords students the opportunity to take part in more engaging activities. In all Teachers Guild Chapters, educators nurture their creative leadership abilities — listening more deeply to their students, experimenting with and measuring the impact of new ideas, and reimagining their roles as professionals and learners.

If we want to prepare our students to become the problem solvers and ethical leaders of tomorrow, then we have to equip our teachers to be the creative, equity-driven leaders of today.

If we want to prepare our students to become the problem solvers and ethical leaders of tomorrow, then we have to equip our teachers to be the creative, equity-driven leaders of today. To this end, The Teachers Guild focuses on bolstering collective teacher efficacy, or the shared belief that they can create change. Notably, John Hattie’s Visible Learning research identifies collective teacher efficacy as the leading way to positively impact student achievement. A staff that believes it can collectively make a positive impact on students is essential to building a healthy culture in which both students and educators can thrive.

The Teachers Guild hones this approach to collective, integrated work in school districts as a member of the Integration Design Consortium (IDC), a larger initiative of Carnegie Corporation. The IDC believes that efforts to improve young people’s lives are too often pursued in isolation, resulting in well-intentioned strategies that frequently do not match the realities in which they are implemented. More on the IDC can be found in the Carnegie Corporation’s new report, From Fragmentation to Coherence: How more integrative ways of working could accelerate improvement and progress toward equity in education.

As part of the IDC, The Teachers Guild is able to bring many best practices to bear:

• Instead of focusing solely on compliance-driven metrics, The Teachers Guild brings together educators around a shared purpose that allows them to think more broadly about what defines challenge and success in their classrooms.

• Instead of providing professional development that lacks relevance, The Teachers Guild attends to the circumstances of educators, partnering with them to codesign learning experiences for teachers and administrators in a district.

• Instead of operating in a silo, The Teachers Guild listens to its partners and repeatedly adjusts its programming to respond to the evolving needs of the teachers and administrators it serves.

The result is a professional learning program that reflects key components of working integratively.

In the second year of a two-year partnership, District 11 educators and The Teachers Guild are embracing these practices of integrated work. This year has seen an increase in the number of teachers involved, and these participants are helping to iterate on programming from the first year, thus assuming greater ownership of their professional learning with The Teachers Guild. Bolstered by administrator support, District 11’s teacher leaders are codesigning and leading trainings for their colleagues across the district. Teachers are applying the design process in their roles as community leaders, not simply as a method to address discrete challenges in their schools.

It’s now 4:10 p.m. at Baychester Academy. The crowd of students and parents has cleared, and the teachers have gotten to work. They are challenging themselves and their colleagues to grow as professionals and learners by designing solutions that attend to the complex needs of their students. In doing so, they are becoming more than deliverers of content, but leaders who are pursuing change for and from their classrooms.

Larry Corio serves as Learning & Impact Specialist for The Teachers Guild, a professional learning community incubated in IDEO’s Design for Learning Studio. A former education researcher and high school teacher, he is especially interested in activating educators to become better evaluators of their own impact in classrooms.

Redefining Professional Development: Educators as Leaders and Learners was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The inspiration for my Passion Project came from asking my students which superpower they would like to have. Responses ranged from “I want an increase in speed — both physically and mentally,” to “I want to be able to read people — like, when they don’t talk, I want to figure out why they act the way they do,” and “I want more courage to try new things that I’m too scared to do,” and finally, “I want to be able to read between the lines, to feel what other people are feeling but not saying.” I was surprised to hear that students requested realistic superpowers that they could easily integrate into their lives. This got me thinking on how I could engage students to identify their existing superpowers (i.e. strengths) and how that could move them closer to their goals.

I based my Passion Project on the question: “How might we encourage students to identify their own strengths and apply strengths in a meaningful way?” I introduced this topic at the beginning of the school year through some activities to get students thinking about their strengths. First, students created their own personal brand in three words. A personal brand is what you are known for and how people experience you. Identifying a personal brand helps students reflect on how others may see them. Next, we chose a few activities from Team Works (an amazing team-building curriculum) to help build community and learn more about each other (Note: All of the Team Works activities are great but the ones I felt most relevant to my unit were activities from Theme 4: Connecting Across Cultures and Theme 5: How to Get the Best Out of a Team.) Later in the school year, students completed three investigative units that would help them determine their ‘Learning’, ‘Activity’, and ‘Relationship’ strengths. Finally, students applied their strengths through a Passion Project of their choice.

Students worked on their Passion Projects for three weeks. Similar to Genius Hour or 20% Project, students pursued an individual creative interest (building something, creating original art, designing an app, etc.). At the end, students were asked to prepare a visual aid and oral presentation for a ‘Student Showcase’ where students actively engaged a younger audience in their creative journey. My 8th graders enjoyed being able to hang out with friends, showcase their work, and speak to an audience. One student told me that time flew by during the Showcase!

After completing the investigative units and our Passion Projects, my students and I had the following takeaways:

Strengths energize you, they are not just something you are good at. Many of my students had the misconception that their strengths are things they excel at, but I emphasized that this is only partly true. To truly determine whether something is a strength, you need to reflect on how you feel as you complete the activity or task. Does it energize you? Can you be motivated to do it again? If you excel at an activity but it does not leave you feeling invigorated, that is a sign it is not a strength.

We show different strengths in different areas. Much of the research for my Teacher’s Guild Passion Project came from the book, “Your Child’s Strengths” by Jenifer Fox. It is a great resource for educators and parents that want activities to try with children of all ages. In the book, Fox states that we have strengths in three different areas: activity, relationships, and learning . Activity strengths are tasks that you excel at that make you feel good. Relationship strengths are tasks you do for people that make you feel strong about the relationship. Learning strengths are the best ways and environments we learn in.

What makes your strengths your strengths? To validate what you claim to be your strength, you must complete investigative work. Students broke down simple, everyday tasks (cooking, shopping for groceries, chores, etc.) into parts or steps to identify which tasks energized or depleted them. Self-reflecting helped students see the origins of their strengths.

Strengths engage talents and become skills. Students are more likely to repeat the activities that relate to their strengths and eventually develop them into a skill or talent. After they have identified strengths, it is up to the students to continue developing until they become a more permanent part of their lives. The idea that personal growth can happen outside of school can be seen in the rise of microlearning, digital badges, and other technology tools that promote self-paced learning. Students who can identify personal strengths and engage them early may have an advantage when it comes to applying talents and skills.

Knowing strengths is just as important as knowing weaknesses. A student response to a survey question about how to improve this unit next year was profound, “I don’t think we should only focus on strengths, but also our weaknesses. Knowing our weaknesses will allow us to avoid taking on more than we can handle, it would also help deflate the egos of those who are arrogant.” This incredibly insightful response was a moment of realization for me. Identifying strengths is only valuable if we are also given the time to reflect on our weaknesses, including the weaknesses that lie within our strengths.

Talk it Out. One thing I would do differently next time is build in more time to share insights with a partner or group. Feedback from the people who are closest to you or who work with you on a regular basis, can be valuable in providing insights.

Find the right word. I found that many of my students did not know how to describe their strengths. One of the activities asked students to describe a task that energized them in one word. After reviewing their responses, it was apparent that they needed more support. Their one descriptive word was either too general (i.e. deciding) or too specific (i.e. drawing). As a result, I created this word bank to help students choose a word that best described their strength. After sharing the word bank, students were able to continue more smoothly.

Take a pause. Reflection is important, our strengths may change over time and finding strengths is personal and requires effort. There is no one test or questionnaire that will tell you what your strengths are. You determine strengths through asking questions as you complete tasks and by noticing how you feel doing certain things. Possible questions you could ask yourself to further determine strengths: What was the most successful project I ever tackled and what made it successful? What was the most important team role I ever fulfilled and why? When faced with an overwhelming obstacle, what is my go-to skill to overcome it? What are the strengths that others acknowledge in me? I would love to see students reflect on this project in years to come. My goal is to create a survey to send former students in high school to see if their strengths have changed or remained the same.

Overall, I think my students got a lot out of this project, which was the central aim. I would make a few changes next year, such as adding more time for the Passion Project, transforming some of the activities with Nearpod, Go Formative, or FlipGrid to make them more engaging, and building in more time to talk. This experience taught me that the design thinking process can be applied to a wide range of problems. My cohort shared some inspiring Passion Projects that demonstrated this in creative ways. For instance, Tiffanie Harrison designed the Elevation Framework, a way to tackle equity and ensure student voices are heard. Phil Capaldi designed the Hallway Buddy: a small, interactive mascot that lives in the hallway and builds school culture. Lisa Bridie Parish designed Civic Science, a year-long project empowering students to develop solutions for local environmental issues. The insights collected from our experiences shows that educators can make lasting impact in any context.

Special thanks to my co-worker, friend, and mentor, Mariana Garcia (@MarianaGSerrato), for creating and sharing some of the resources I used for this project.

Originally published at emergingeducation.blogspot.com on September 10, 2018.

The Power of Strength: What I Learned Through My Teacher’s Guild Passion Project was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Guild stands with you today. was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Do you remember carbon copy paper forms? I do. I had to use them to write comments about student performance when I began my teaching career. It was the early 1990s and computers were not yet common. The internet was still a mystery to most educators.

Over the past decade, digital technology and internet use have become a prominent, daily tool in classrooms. Like other educators, I have kept up by playing with new technology and running experiments to integrate technology into my classroom.

As an educator, I ask myself: How might we support students as they develop habits that will make them informed, savvy, and safe citizens in the real world and online?

Working in schools, I know technology holds tremendous possibility. I have seen it empower students to co-create, problem-solve, and share their voice widely. Of course, we can just as quickly point to issues in the digital world that concern us. Cyber-bullying, filter bubbles, and access to inappropriate content remind us of how the digital world mirrors the real world: the good and the bad coexist. While we talk about how to prepare our students to be leaders in the real world, we need to consider the realities of their digital presence, which is only growing in significance.

That’s why I’m excited to share these teacher-created, student-tested ideas to bring digital citizenship into your classroom. These favorites were selected from over 100 ideas submitted from educators across the country, who came together to share, collaborate, and build together during The Teachers Guild’s and ISTE’s 10-week design challenge. Along with other teacher mentors, I supported in coaching teachers to further develop their ideas. This collaboration between The Teachers Guild and ISTE is a perfect example of the power and value that good digital citizenship can bring into the world.

You can download your very own copy of the Digital Citizenship Solutions Book here. We hope these ideas will inspire you and that you’ll try them in your classroom! Share how you’re bringing digital citizenship in your classroom with The Guild and ISTE by using the hashtag #TGDigiCit or email us at hello@teachersguild.org.

Let’s Embrace Digital Citizenship: Teaching Digital Citizenship in today’s classrooms was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Schools are the first places we find ourselves amongst peers, learning the values of collaboration and community. In a world that feels increasingly divided, the importance of these educational spaces and the teachers at the heart of them cannot be understated.We rely on teachers to navigate the cultural and technological shifts occurring outside the classroom and to educate our youth on issues that matter. Teachers have the capacity to equip students with the tools they need to engage in public life and to instil values that are carried forward into adulthood. That is why we at The Teachers Guild believe teachers are the civic leaders our communities need.

The idea of civic leadership was the recurrent thread throughout our recent Chapters Kickoff event, where we bring together our teaching community to discuss the methods and mindsets of design thinking and its application in the classroom. This event marks the beginning of our program calendar, in which we prepare teachers to address design challenges in their school district. The Kickoff began with a ‘one conversation dinner’ held at the Stanford D. School, where teachers, principles and district leaders discussed the notion of teachers as civic leaders. The participants considered issues ranging from politics in the classroom to gun violence and school safety. The aim was not to produce steadfast answers, rather to create an environment where teachers could bring their individual experience to the table and discuss the problems that mattered to them most.

The Kickoff continued the following day at IDEO Palo Alto and the theme for the day was ‘Ecosystems.’ The Guild team considers an ecosystem to be a productive analogy for a healthy school environment: ever changing, agile and adapting for the diversity of life within it. This flexibility is central to creating a creative culture in schools, one in which students and teachers are able to be curious, collaborate and believe in their capacity to create change.

The Guild, like IDEO at large, considers empathy to be a foundation block of a creative culture. Teachers at the Kickoff were asked to brainstorm scenarios in which they would be told ‘no’ and compare this to a list of situations where they had refused a student request. This exercise urged the teachers to acknowledge their position of power in the classroom and the importance of empathy to understanding students’ mindsets. Instead of defaulting to ‘no’ the teachers were encouraged to listen to their students, step into their shoes and practice starting with questions not answers.

“One of the biggest things is to listen. Listen to ideas and concerns. And not just to adults, but also to students.”

Keishia Blake, Teacher NYC Chapter, District 11, Bronx

Later in the day Lorenzo Cooper from The Ever Forward Club led our teachers and the Guild team in a ‘taking off the mask’ exercise to demonstrate the importance of leaders revealing vulnerability within a creative culture. We were asked to consider the mask we present to the world and how this differs from our internal state. In doing this, teachers were encouraged to think deeply about their students’ behaviours because, as Lorenzo reminded us, “what you see on the outside is the tip of the iceberg.”’

In our panel discussion on creative cultures the ideas of play and risk taking within learning were explored. Brendan Boyle, founder of IDEO Toy Lab, made us think about the potential of play as a tool within the classroom and urged us to dispel the notion that work and play are mutually exclusive.

“the opposite of play isn’t work, it’s boredom.”

Brendan Boyle, Founder of IDEO Toy Lab

The central aim of the Chapters Kickoff was to ignite conversations around creativity, equity and thinking and acting like a designer. The educators praised the human-centeredness of the Kickoff, where they felt valued (4.6/5) and personally seen and heard (4.5/5). Importantly, the event also generated a lot of momentum for the participants, who reported that they’ll likely continue working with somebody they met at the event (4.5/5) and are excited to collaborate more deeply with their own colleagues (4.9/5).

In bringing together our amazing community we were able to affirm that teachers are civic leaders with the ability to embrace and act on new ideas. This is exemplified by one participant’s answer to our question of “Where does the heart of creativity lie?”- “within all of us.”

Teachers as Civic Leaders was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are excited to announce the launch of our Guild Fellowship. Guild Fellows are creating change for and from their classroom. Throughout the one year Fellowship, you’ll design an innovative solution, share it across your school or district, and be a part of a cohort of 10 exceptional educators from across the U.S. who believe in the power of teacher ideas to transform education from the ground up…All from your current classroom.

We think this might be you!

The Time For Teachers is Now

Teachers have the greatest impact on students. But their innovations go unseen and their expertise goes unrecognized. Together, with all of you, we want to change that. Through this Fellowship, teachers will be at the heart of designing the future of education from their current classroom. As one of only 10 selected Fellows, you will tap into:

• Personal Growth: Mentorship and training to grow into a creative leader with an exceptional cohort of teacher-innovators
• School Transformation: Opportunity to impact your school and district directly from the classroom, with support from an incredible team around you
• Nationwide Education Leadership: Influence the next generation of learner-centered ideas through privileged access to The Guild network of optimistic educators and leading partners

What Does It Take?

A year-in-the life of a Guild Fellow

Fellows will meet two times a year in-person, and receive virtual training, mentoring, and checkpoints with the Guild team throughout the school year. We know teachers already put in a lot of time, expect to contribute roughly 4–6hrs/week to the fellowship outside of your classroom.

• Creative Leadership Institute: Two day in-person cohort kickoff to grow as a creative leader at IDEO, San Francisco offices.
• Design and Integration Training Series: Six virtual fall and spring trainings focused on Learner-Centered Design and Teacher-led Integration.
• Design Reviews: Two check-ins, facilitated by Guild staff, to share your design and integration plans with your school leadership, and receive support and feedback to grow your idea.
• Community of practice calls: Reflect monthly with your cohort and collectively problem-solve.
• Idea Capstone: One day in-person summit to share your idea, and celebrate each others’ journeys throughout the year.
• Gallery Showcase: Publish your design journey and idea on The Guild solution gallery and on The Guild’s Medium publication.

Who will we look for?

We only have spots for 10 educators across the country. We think it’s you!

• Learner-centered teachers who can demonstrate a history of successful innovation in their classroom
• Teachers who influence beyond the classroom, with evidence of leadership success in their school
• Teachers with a bold idea they are passionate to grow and spread in their school
• Support from your principal or district official who believes in your growth and wants to help you share new ideas
• Current K12 US educator with 3+ years of experience; we will prioritize teachers who serve in Title I schools, and you do not leave your classroom or school to be a Fellow!

Application Process

The application journey

• Application closes Friday, June 9th
• Those selected to move forward will interview and submit letters of reference by June 2nd.
• Fellows announced June 14th!

The Origin Story — Why Fellows Now

The past year has taught us so many lessons in what it takes to support teachers and their ideas to make lasting change for students today.

The concept of the Guild Fellowship was born out the many insights our current cohort of coaches have provided to us since we launched. They have been core to our experience, helping to define what The Guild is today, driving the development of hundreds of solutions, and pushing us to respond to teachers’ greatest needs. The Guild Fellowship is our coaching program 2.0 — it incorporates the insights from the past with our dreams for the future. Our questions for the future are:

1. How might we transition from connections to relationships? Relationships will be core to the Fellowship experience. We will provide training and support to Fellows as they build trusting relationships with teachers across our community while nurturing local relationships in their school contexts as they spread their big idea.
2. How might we engage a diverse community of educators? We know that if we want to surface the best ideas in education, we must attract and support a diverse community of teachers who feel welcomed to grow and learn side-by-side. Our Fellows will represent the diversity of American classrooms today, with different backgrounds, experiences, and from a variety of school environments.
3. How might we establish new, creative teacher leadership pathways? We’ve seen that ideas come to life with support, collaboration, and pathways to share beyond one classroom.

We’re very excited for The Guild Fellowship and hope you apply! The time for teachers is now — you are the innovators education has been waiting for.

Click to apply to be a Guild Fellow Today!

P.S. Want to know more about The Guild?

Meet The Teachers Guild:

The Teachers Guild believes teachers are the innovators education has been waiting for.

However, while teachers have the greatest impact on our students, their innovations go unseen and their expertise goes unrecognized. The Guild is changing that. We are a teacher-driven community that is mobilizing educators across all 50 states to tap into their creativity and become designers. Our members are improving the quality of education and rate of innovation in their classrooms and schools, ultimately improving student outcomes. By designing, learning and leading, our teachers are creating systemic change for and from their classroom, while becoming a nationwide creative force that is addressing our students most pressing learning needs.

The Teachers Guild is an early stage non-profit of Plussed at Riverdale Country School that’s being incubated by IDEO’s Design for Learning Studio. To learn more visit www.teachersguild.org.

Announcing The Teachers Guild Fellowship was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“What’s civics?” This is the question we heard educators ask over and over again during our fall Collaboration, when our community embarked on a design journey to reinvigorate civic learning in their schools. Today, reinvigorating civics feels even more relevant than when we launched it this past September.

We saw diverse solutions during our design challenge and are still exploring what civics can mean in schools. What we have learned, however, is that at its best, civics is much more than a contained discipline or a single class. As Emma Humphries, Chief Education Officer at iCivics, whose mission is to inspire students to be active participants in U.S. democracy, put it:

“It’s education that should inspire our students towards a lifetime of informed, fierce, and tireless engagement in their communities and in public life.”

We love this definition and wonder what it would take to achieve it. How might we reimagine civics as an integral part of school so that all students know and believe in their unique power to make a difference in the world?

This question is important right now because the outcomes of the presidential election have opened up a flurry of new discussions about citizenship, how to make our voices heard, and what the future of civic engagement will look like.

For example, teachers are asking how to maintain safe, supportive and inclusive classrooms in this post-election environment where white nationalistic agendas have been bolstered and minority groups targeted. Bright, Medium’s education column, shared stories from schools across America the week after the election, highlighting this struggle. For example, they shared a story of student-made signs segregating water fountains by race in a Florida high school.

It is devastating to hear these stories and think of their impact on students. It is also hard to imagine being an educator right now, holding up inclusive environments during such a divisive period.

But still, just one week into the post-election heat, we culminated our #CivicVoices project with something quite optimistic: we brought together students, teachers and partners at the Chavez Middle School for Public Policy, located on the eastern edge of Washington D.C., to discuss new and better ideas to support the future of civic education. The school serves low-income youth in a predominantly black community, and is only miles away from Capitol Hill and the White House. We did this because, despite divisive national conversations, we know that teachers and students have so much energy and optimism to make schools incredible places of learning, where all students feel welcomed and heard.

At this workshop, we met Teniyah, an 8th grader who is passionate about shaping her school. “I wish that all students felt as comfortable about who they are in classrooms,” she said, responding to This is Me and I Matter, an idea submitted by a Nicole Ayala, who teaches high school in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Ayala’s solution asks students to submit videos about who they are and what they want others to know about them, in an effort to expose the mismatch of stereotyping and self-identification. Like so many ideas we reviewed, this solution both reflects the divides that exist in schools today, but also the readiness to work towards bridging these gaps and preparing students for active public engagement.

Many of the ideas that emerged during our Collaboration are starting points to help students engage and make their voices known. Of course, we know that no one idea is the silver bullet to solve a difficult challenge, just as we know civics is one important question of many that we face in education.

As we continue to address these challenges at The Guild, we feel it’s important to listen to each other right now. That’s why we’re asking you to inform our next set of Collaborations by sharing what your questions are.

What sorts of challenges do you want to take on this spring with this optimistic community of educators? It can be on any subject or any topic. What do you most want to tackle with us?

Here is our ask: share your How Might We question using #MyHMW on Twitter or in the comment section below. To invite others to discuss your topic and brainstorm ideas, we suggest beginning your question with the words ‘How might we.’ Don’t forget to add the hashtag #MyHMW.

Thank you for helping to make your students’ voices heard and for showing up each day with optimism and hope.

With Gratitude,
The Teachers Guild

Reflections from #CivicVoices and Questions About the Future was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Designing an Engineering Experience for All Learners
by Anastassia Radeva

Anastassia Radeva is the Elementary Engineering Specialist at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, a nonprofit children’s museum positioned at the intersection of STEM and creativity and a partner in the Teachers Guild and 100kin10’s Collaboration to design active and authentic STEM learning experiences.

At the Bay Area Discovery Museum, we believe that STEM education is an integral part of developing creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving skills in our young learners. As the Elementary Engineering Specialist at the museum, I am developing a new off-site, mobile educational program geared at providing early engineering educational experiences to children, educators, and caregivers. I’m so excited about this project because it will bring joyful and hands-on, minds-on experiences directly to schools and communities, and because we’ve been developing it directly with teachers.

Our program idea arose from the question: “how can we demystify engineering for students and teachers in the elementary school space?” Our response to this important question was to create a program that can provide hands-on, interest-building engineering experiences that can travel between schools, community organizations, and public spaces to bring high-quality engineering education directly to users. We landed on creating a mobile engineering lab program based upon feedback from teacher partners, who expressed that having easy, affordable access to educational experiences that model high-quality engineering learning is important. The project then continued to evolve through testing, feedback, and iteration.

Feedback from our end users — in this case, our teacher and educator community — was really important as we developed our idea. We collected feedback through a series of focus groups with teachers, STEM coordinators, and administrators. This taught us that a mobile vehicle equipped to facilitate a wide variety of engineering programs would be exciting and unintimidating for teachers, students, and the broader community. We also conducted a series of collaborative visits to other mobile educational programs, including the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Roving Rangers, UC-Davis’ Beta Lab, Stanford University’s Sparktruck, and the San Francisco Public Library’s Techmobile, to learn about challenges, affordances, and tips about creating a similar initiative.

To test and iterate our idea, we are developing curriculum units and actively testing them with local elementary school classrooms in the coming months. We are experimenting with a wide variety of program offerings, from one-day engineering extravaganzas that all students at an elementary school site can participate in, to multi-day, intensive visits oriented at specific grade levels. We will also be testing and improving our idea through full pilots this upcoming spring with school site partners in rural and urban locations throughout the Bay Area.

Help us continue to learn! Here are some questions for you:

• When you hear “mobile engineering lab”, what do you think that means?
• What words, images, or feelings come to mind?
• If this mobile educational program showed up in your community, what do you think would happen during this experience?

As you embark on your own design journey, know this: you will fail, and THAT’S OK! Fail early, and fail often, because that’s how you will develop a well-rounded and tested idea. When you do fail, don’t shut down — use this as an opportunity to hone in on what DOES work and what could be better or different.

Learn more and get involved in our Collaboration on active and authentic STEM here.

The Bay Area Discovery Museum Goes Mobile was originally published in The Teachers Guild on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.